The Builders

In the morning Letty awoke with a sore throat, and before night she had developed a cold which spent itself in paroxysms of coughing. "Oh, Miss Meade, make me well before Friday...

In January a heavy snow fell, and Letty, who had begun to cough again, was kept indoors for a week. After the morning lessons were over, Mammy Riah amused the child, while Carol...

At the end of June, Caroline learned from the papers that Blackburn had returned to Briarlay; and the same day she heard through Daisy Colfax that Alan Wythe had been killed in...

As the car turned into the lane it passed Alan and Mary, and Mrs. Blackburn ordered the chauffeur to stop while she leaned out of the window and waited, with her vague, shimmeri...

A week later, on an afternoon when the October sunshine sparkled like wine beneath a sky that was the colour of day-flowers, Caroline sat on the terrace waiting for Mrs. Blackbu...

In the train Caroline sat straight and still, with her eyes on the landscape, which unrolled out of the golden web of the distance. Now and then, when her gaze shifted, she coul...

At four o'clock Daisy Colfax rushed off to a committee meeting at Briarlay ("something very important, though I can't remember just which one it is"), and an hour later Caroline...

When she reached her room, Caroline took off her cap and uniform and laid them smoothly away in her trunk. Then she began packing with deliberate care, while her thoughts whirle...

"Oh, Miss Meade, I've been dying to see you and hear news of Letty!" exclaimed the young woman in her vivacious manner. She was wearing a hat of royal purple, with a sweeping wi...

The train was late that day, and when the old leather mail pouch was brought in, dripping wet, by Jonas, the negro driver, Mrs. Meade put down the muffler she was knitting, and...

Toward the close of an afternoon in November, Caroline was walking from the hospital to a boarding-house in Grace Street, where she was spending a few days between cases. All su...

In Letty's nursery the next afternoon, Blackburn came at last to know Caroline without the barrier of her professional manner. The child was playing happily with her paper dolls...

No one met her at the little country station, and leaving her bag for old Jonas, she started out alone to walk the two miles to The Cedars. Straight ahead the long, empty road t...

"I don't often go to dinner parties," said Caroline while she pinned on the rose. "Will there be many people?" There was no shyness in her voice or manner; and it seemed to Mrs....

So it has come at last, and we really and truly are at war. There is not so much excitement as you would have thought--I suppose because we have waited so long--but everybody ha...

In the breakfast room next morning, Caroline found the little girl in charge of Miss Miller, the nurse who was leaving that day. Letty was a fragile, undeveloped child of seven...

"Well, beware the anger--or isn't it the fury?--of the patient man. It has to come at last. We've been growling too long not to spring--and my only regret is that, as long as we...

For the rest of the afternoon she carried the letter hidden in her uniform, where, from time to time, she could pause in her task, and put her hand reassuringly on the edge of t...

From the second drawing-room, where Angelica had tea every afternoon, there drifted the fragrance of burning cedar, and as Blackburn walked quickly toward the glow of the fire,...

The fire was burning low, and after Blackburn had thrown a fresh log on the andirons, he sat down in one of the big leather chairs by the hearth, and watched the flames as they...

When the last guest had gone, Caroline went upstairs to her room, and sitting down before the little ivory and gold desk, began a letter to her mother. For years, ever since her...

When Caroline looked back upon it afterwards, she remembered that dinner as the most depressing meal of her life. While she ate her food, with the dutiful determination of the t...

A fortnight later light was thrown on Blackburn's perplexity by a shrewd question from Mrs. Timberlake. For days he had been groping in darkness, and now, in one instant, it see...

When Caroline entered the house, the sound of clinking plates and rattling knives told her that the boarders had already assembled at supper; and it surprised her to discover th...

At midnight, when she was alone in her room, Caroline's mind passed from an intense personal realization of the Blackburns to a broader conception of the time in which she was l...